🇧🇬 Bulgarian elections megathread (next up: European and National (?) Parliament 09 June 2024)
Beagle:
Quote from: Beagle on January 04, 2023, 10:50:51 AM
And yes, nothing has changed about the likelihood for a new election - it is not a done deal, but it is by far the likelier option than a government formed by DB or BV with the third mandate (for many reasons, it is unlikely that Radev will present BSP with the third mandate for the fourth time). S
Uh, yeah, about that... I went to a DB struggle session activist event today, the scuttlebutt is - in light of the under fire crypto pyramid scheme lender Nexo's ties to PP and DB* - the third mandate, which was supposed to go to DB will instead be indeed presented to BSP for the fourth time. If true, this makes a new election on 26 March or 2 April virtually certain.
Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.
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*
- an ex-PP parliamentarian was a Nexo manager, another MP had common companies with a Nexo founder, who himself was a 2014-2017 Reformist Bloc MP
- DB received sizable donations from Nexo employees
Sadader:
Quote from: Beagle on January 04, 2023, 10:50:51 AM
So, after all that, the Bulgarian politicians recognized the burden of the moment and, while recognizing the many tangible and intangible differences that separate them, they used the past two months to engage in conversations about the local and global economy and the EU recovery funds and the war in Ukraine and justice reform and constitutional law and I am kidding. There is no particular end in sight, either to the perpetual (and common) squabbling, or to the general deadlock, with no party or even broad camp achieving anything close to a breakthrough. In all likelihood, there is no end in sight of the elections, either.
But with the end of the year comes a time to reflect on what one won and lost over the past period and I thought I'd write up the winter of Bulgarian broad and deep discontent resigned apathy through the eyes of the main political players.
Haha, this thread is really fantastic. Thank you for all the detail.
Euro adoption seems to be the only thing the parties can agree on (along with EU funds absorption/Schengen it seems). As far as I understand, assuming the Commission waives the inflation requirement given the invasion of Ukraine, there's only one facet that Bulgaria isn't complying with - that "each Member State shall ensure that its national legislation, including the statutes of its national central bank, is compatible with these Treaties." European media seem to just be assuming that Bulgaria will meet the legal compatibility criteria by the June convergence assessment then and so will adopt the Euro in January 2024.
But is the dead parliament actually making progress on conforming to the legislation or will Bulgaria fail to meet the legal requirements by June? What even needs to be done? The talk about technical negotiations seems like malarkey to me, surely there's legislation that needs to be passed.
Storr:
Petkov is going public with what he did to help Ukraine:
https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1615826161908551682?s=20&t=qkU4xxsq...var scriptTag = document.getElementsByTagName('script');scriptTag = scriptTag[scriptTag.length-1];atlas_tweetCheckLoad(scriptTag.parentNode, "tw_0_426578236567763278", "tw_2_12998713279988512", "https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1615826161908551682?s=20&t=qkU4xxsqiXv7dBQzFQ30wQ");
Beagle:
Quote from: Sadader on January 18, 2023, 01:07:53 AM
Haha, this thread is really fantastic. Thank you for all the detail.
Euro adoption seems to be the only thing the parties can agree on (along with EU funds absorption/Schengen it seems). As far as I understand, assuming the Commission waives the inflation requirement given the invasion of Ukraine, there's only one facet that Bulgaria isn't complying with - that "each Member State shall ensure that its national legislation, including the statutes of its national central bank, is compatible with these Treaties." European media seem to just be assuming that Bulgaria will meet the legal compatibility criteria by the June convergence assessment then and so will adopt the Euro in January 2024.
But is the dead parliament actually making progress on conforming to the legislation or will Bulgaria fail to meet the legal requirements by June? What even needs to be done? The talk about technical negotiations seems like malarkey to me, surely there's legislation that needs to be passed.
Thanks!
At the aforementioned DB event, we were told to get ready for a three-in-one election on 29 October (give or take a week): this would entail the regular local elections, the sixth parliamentary election within 2.5 years - I originally wrote early parliamentary election, but at this point might as well call it the regular biannual election - and an anti-Euro-adoption referendum, proposed by Vazrazhdane (who are actively gathering signatures a few hundred meters from where I'm writing right now). For constitutional law reasons, this will be termed 'a postponement of the adoption of the Euro until 2042', or whenever. Even if it takes place, this referendum will share the fate of all other modern Bulgarian referenda*, but, ideally, the systemic parties would prefer to not have to deal with that transparent Vazrazhdane vote-boosting stunt on top of all the others.
Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.
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A brief history of modern Bulgarian referendii
Under Bulgarian law a referendum needs 50%+1 vote to be binding, as well as a turnout that is equal or more than the turnout for the last held parliamentary election. If it fails either threshold, but "Yes" prevails and the turnout exceeds 20% of the total, the question reverts to parliament, which must take a vote on the issue within 3 months
2013 - Belene Nuclear Power Station construction referendum (BSP stunt) - reached the minimum 20% turnout threshold by the skin of its teeth, was approved by 60%:37%, rejected in parliament, 10 years later the Belene NPP still continues to be a literal and metaphorical quagmire, a zombie that still rears its head from time to time, but is less and less likely to be built with each passing year
2015 - Remote electronic voting referendum - (President Plevneliev [GERB] stunt) - was approved by 70%:25%, passed in parliament as a declaration only, no real effort was ever expended in making remote electronic voting a reality, the 2022 amendments to the electoral code even removed the brief mention of remote voting at some unspecified point in the future.
2016 - Electoral reforms referendum - (Slavi Trifonov [future ITN] stunt) - or as I like to call it, Electoral reform referendum pt. 2, electric boogaloo, had 3 components - single member districts, compulsory voting, reduction in party subsidies - the 1st and the 3rd passed 72%:21%, the 2nd 61:34% - parliament stalled on all 3, none of the measures was ever really implemented in the way the referendum proponents campaigned on.
So yes, referendums are batting a solid 0/5 in Bulgaria, if Vazrazhdane manage to pull off theirs, I'm pretty sure it will go 0/6
Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.
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For bemusement purposes only:
When going through the proposed referenda that are currently collecting signatures, I saw that two committees would like to ask the Bulgarian populace the following questions:
- should Bulgaria enter into a 2 year negotiation process for withdrawal from the EU unless it is offered substantially better conditions for staying and those are approved by a further referendum
- should all transactions with the US, Russia, the IMF and the WHO be temporarily halted until the privileges for Ukrainian refugees are extended to all Bulgarian citizens, as well as other refugees
- [as an extension to the previous question] should the number of Ukrainian refugees in Bulgaria be regulated to be equal with the number of refugees from other conflict countries which... the organizers may not have fully thought through
- should courts use a binding lie detector test as the chief resolution method
- should an absolute monarchy be established under a genetic relative of Prince Alexander of Battenberg (or two other Bulgarian historical figures). So, Prince Harry, who is the Prince's great(x7)-nephew, can finally be useful for once!
So, to the best of my knowledge, GERB, PP, DPS, most of BSP, DB and BV, albeit with some internal dissent, are all working towards passing the needed legislation, a lot of which is esoteric in nature and does not attract any media attention. The two chief obstacles, afaik, are:
- a new National Bank Law, which has been a significant bone of contention - and in fact proved the impetus for ITN bringing down the Petkov government, since they withdrew their support after PP, BSP and DB failed to support their candidate for the governorship of the central bank, leaving the incumbent in place (for the 9th year from his 6-year term).
- the Euro adoption law itself, which is ready, but is supposed to pass only after the final approval has been granted and the wheels are set irreversibly in motion.
However, the deficit to GDP% may prove to be a stumbling block. The madcap spending of the Petkov government (based on the argument that once corruption has been slashed, taxation revenues will grow exponentially), and the perpetual campaign mode in the short-lived parliaments made the 2022 budget, which was extended until at least May 2023, quite unbalanced and projections are for a deficit exceeding 3% for 2023.
Still, the political will is definitely there on both sides and I think the process is more likely than not to end with Euro adoption on 1 January 2024, even if the legal framework and/or the deficit ratio criteria are not completely fulfilled. And if the government at the time (which is almost 100% certain to still be the caretakers Radev appoints next) signs the paperwork, the referendum should not take place, even if there are enough signatures. Although the Constitutional court has been acting up lately, so who knows what they will decide.
Quote from: Storr on January 18, 2023, 09:37:00 PM
Petkov is going public with what he did to help Ukraine:
https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1615826161908551682?s=20&t=qkU4xxsq...var scriptTag = document.getElementsByTagName('script');scriptTag = scriptTag[scriptTag.length-1];atlas_tweetCheckLoad(scriptTag.parentNode, "tw_0_631137609163662272", "tw_2_1593619389287136732", "https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1615826161908551682?s=20&t=qkU4xxsqiXv7dBQzFQ30wQ");
Well, that's one version of events :D
Frodo:
It will be either March 26 or April 2:
Bulgaria to hold new snap general election after parties fail to form government
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